Monday, 5 March 2012

Text from thunderf00t's blog is in normal font, where my comments are red and italic.

To be honest when I first got the take down notices, about 6 of them in an hour or so (4 content inappropriate with no chance of appeal, and two privacy complaints) I thought,
‘another harassing and minor annoyance in running the channel. A quick email to YT should sort it out.’At least you have the option to write an e-mail to YouTube.
I was then simply stunned when youtube claimed these videos had been reviewed by professional and impartial moderators and were removed for either hate speech or privacy violation.So you didn't know that YouTube doesn't review the videos? Have you been living under a rock? There is no way in hell that you didn't know this. Unless you are extremely self-centered. The more so as some of these videos constituted some of the milder things I’ve said about religion.Yeah, but still the nicest videos gets flagged. It is not news, TF. I have been on YouTube since 2007, and it is pretty common that this happens. The bottom line was, if this really was the new bar for hate speech, not only would it in an instant render the Thunderf00t channel unviable, it would render virtually every rationalist channel unviable. I hate to break this to you, but you do NOT speak for every rationalist (TM) channel out there. What you do on your channel, does not affect me in the slightest. And how when Coughlan666 was flagged, didn't that also set the bar for hate speech? Or when I was flagged? Is there any channel besides yours, Phil, that has this amazing superpower of rendering every rationalist channel unviable? Youtubes actions were simply unintelligible. Indeed if someone had told me these were youtube actions, I simply wouldn’t have believed them. But there were the words on the screen in black and white. What is this fucking bullshit? Seriously. Stop whining, we have all been flagged, so please quit your fucking whining, and take as a fucking man. How close have you come to losing your channel? I have lost my channel. I got it back, by sheer pressure. Not by whining like a little girl. And this is not the first time, stop pretending like no atheist channel has ever been flagged before. Do you remember some years ago, there was a guy named AndromedasWake. He created a site called "The League Of Reason". Tell me, TF, doesn't this have a 'Fighting Censorship' section? Oh it does.. And I'll just address TJ, aka TheAmazingAtheist, here shortly as well. TJ, why the fuck did you jump on this bandwagon? Are you really this fucking stupid? Didn't you once try to create a site called FreeSpeechVids? What was the point of that.. Oh right, escaping false flagging, right? So you are both completely oblivious to the past, just to further your stupid propaganda of atheism being under attack on YouTube, when that is not remotely true. For as Coughlan pointed out, how many theist channels gets close to the atheist channels? I could mention around 10 from the top of my head, that capped the 10,000 subs. So, under attack?

I had no option but to make the video “Youtube starts banning ‘religiously offensive’ videos“.Well there are quite a few other options. You could start building a modelrailroad. Take up knitting. Or here is a fucking idea; make a video called 'Some Of My Videos Have Been Flagged'. Instead of instantly playing the martyr.There were simply no other alternatives.No, none. None what so ever. It is not like you could have done as mentioned above, at all. When I was flagged by Brett Keane and J-dub, my only option was to make a video called 'YouTube Loves Brett Keane And They Totally Agree With Him Flagging Me'. A fairly high stakes game given that youtube could easily have said my action violated the terms of service and just killed the account.Yeah, you put it all on the line, just for us. Thank you, thunderf00t. I am so pleased, that you dared to offer this in order to please the YouTube.

But then again, if the words I had in black and white on the screen were correct, then channel was already dead,No. It was not. If you get flagged within the same timespan, it only counts as one flag. So, your channel would still be in working condition. And after a while, it would be in mint condition again. Just like my channel. I am now allowed to upload videos longer than 15minutes. and the only thing left to do was give a good accounting of itself before the inevitable banhammer.

I don't want to comment further on this absolute drivel of a sob-fest. Stop pretending that this is new, as it isn't. And just keep in mind, you had no qualms with YouTube's opinion on thinking that the Coughlan666 "was a bit too offensive outside of the envelope".